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cyberkahn tips us to an article in Computerworld that makes the case for Apple's consumer machines moving into corporations. (The article dismisses Linux desktops in the enterprise in a single bullet item.) With the press that Vista has been getting, is Apple moving into a perfect storm? Quoting: "There is no comparison between Apple's 'consumer' machines and the consumer lines of its competitors. All of Apple's machines are ready to move into the enterprise, depending on the job at hand. The company's simple and elegant product line, which is also highly customizable, will be Apple's entree to the business market — if IT decision-makers can get over their prejudice against equipment that's traditionally been aimed at consumers."

(The article dismisses Linux desktops in the enterprise in a single bullet item.)" And how is this still considered a noteworthy article?

It's been written by the same scum that brought you the incredibly retarded and contentless article featured on Slashdot on Virtualization sucks [slashdot.org]

We find that most PCs that are sold as enterprise desktops are actually stripped-down, lightweight versions of the computers the same companies sell to home users. These machines lack the basic technologies needed in the modern enterprise. Apple, on the other hand, simply doesn't sell a minimalist computer whose predominant 'feature' is its price point, aimed at businesses or any other market

Care to specify what the basic technologies are?
Oh here they do.

For instance, you can't buy a Mac without at least 512MB of RAM, Bluetooth, 802.11g Wi-Fi networking, Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire and even a remote control -- and that's before you consider the included software. None of the base business models of HP or Dell even comes close to that.

Yes, the modern enterprise needs WiFi on fricking corporate desktops, FireWire, BlueTooth and remote control. And what if you want just 256MB RAM for the secretary who doesn't use anything but Outlook? Nope, you can't buy a Mac without at least 512MB of RAM! And, you get to pay for it!

Apple's desktop lineup has three families: the minis, the iMacs and the Mac Pros. The mini is a full computer -- sans keyboard and mouse

Uhh, it's either a full computer or not. A full computer without a keyboard and mouse is NOT a full computer.

IMacs are Apple's middle-of-the-road desktop line, but a better-looking computer doesn't exist at any price. Complete with a built-in webcam for video chats and LCD screen, it comes in 17-, 20- and gorgeous 24-in. varieties.

Wow, another basic feature without which the enterprise cannot function. The webcam!

There is no comparison between Apple's "consumer" machines and the consumer lines of its competitors. All of Apple's machines are ready to move into the enterprise, depending on the job at hand.

Yes there is no comparison, on one hand you have multiple vendors some of who will pre-install Linux, and almost infinite hardware configurability and on other hand you have limited configurations shoved down your throat whether you need them or not. Macs may be enterprise-worthy, but this article sure doesn't make a case for it.
I recommend that Computer World articles be blacklisted.

Uhh, it's either a full computer or not. A full computer without a keyboard and mouse is NOT a full computer.

That's a stupid statement. It's not like you can't plug a keyboard and mouse into the Mini, it just doesn't come with one in the box by default because it's geared towards Windows switchers who have USB keyboards and mice already. You can order it with a keyboard and mouse if you want.

I've a couple of brief points of contention, tho i certainly agree with your opinion regarding the worthiness of TFA.

1. RAM. How the fuck can you contend that 256 megs is sufficient for anyone? Do you use outlook? Its a hog. My work box has 512 megs and i use it solely for Outlook and internet, and i want more. Also, have you tried using Vista with only 256 megs? Hardly seems worth it.

2. Definition of a full computer. The mini is a fully functional desktop computer. It happens not to be sold with keyboard, monitor, or mouse. This is problem for consumers, not for the enterprise, who's probably supplying everything to the users piecemeal anyways. I work at a large law firm, which is just a big corporate office, and I have never, *NEVER* seen anyone use a computer system that was purchased as a monitor, computer, keyboard, mouse bundle. The computers are all identical, Dell enterprise boxes, but everyone has a mishmash of Microfsoft ergonomic keyboards and optical mice, and mainly sony monitors. The mini is perfect for the corporate office box scenario where the computer should be quickly and easily swappable for repair and still run decent specs.

3. Webcam. kinda silly. I'd never want to video-chat with the people whom i IM. But given the pervasive nature of the conference call in the enterprise environment, i fail to see how increasing webcam existence wouldnt benefit business. Face-to face conference calls? what's not to like?

1) Apple also would have to be a team player. Where is AIX blended with OS X running on IBM servers to make things go fast forward?

Blending things with AIX doesn't make much sense, given that Apple is now on x86 and AIX is for PowerPC. Moreover, why would you want to? If you need a serious, heavy-duty server, run AIX or Linux, OS X will inter-operate perfectly via standard UNIX technologies (NFS, LDAP, etc). If you need an easy-to-admin small server, run OS X server, and all your Linux and Windows clients will be able to use it just fine.

2) Apple also would have to actively integrate other software. Actively, Apple will support Windows and Linux integration on Macintosh computers.

5) Standardized software interfaces. Why does Apple have to use their own disk format? Why does Apple have to do all kinds of things "their own way"?

Apple supports the major standardized UNIX software interfaces. OS X 10.5 will be officially SUSv3 compliant (though at this point, trying to be Linux-compatible is probably more useful). It supports standard protocols like LDAP, NFS, SSH, etc. It does use its own disk format, but then again almost every OS uses its own disk format. Disk formats are not standardized, invariably poorly documented (or in the case of NTFS, undocumented), and usually very closely-tied to the kernel implementation. That's why Linux uses EXT3, AIX uses JFS2, Windows uses NTFS, BSD uses UFS, Solaris uses ZFS, etc.

My question is why would anybody run MacOS X as a UNIX distribution when there are other UNIXes out there that are a lot cheaper to buy, such as BSD, Solaris, and Linux. Not to mention that running UNIX programs in OS X is more trouble at first as OS X doesn't natively use X11 and it will include none of the standard Qt or GTK libraries, X11, or GCC in a standard installation. The appeal of a Mac is that it's got a shiny GUI, NOT that it runs BSD underneath. If I wanted to run BSD, I'd simply go get {Free|O

My question is why would anybody run MacOS X as a UNIX distribution when there are other UNIXes out there that are a lot cheaper to buy, such as BSD, Solaris, and Linux.

That really wasn't the point of the original post. The original poster complained, in so many words, that OS X was isolationist and did everything its own way. That's wrong. Whenever possible, OS X does things how other modern *NIXs do things. Aside from Quartz, Cocoa, and Carbon, most everything in OS X is built off open technologies. OpenGL, LDAP, CUPS, NFS, SSH, etc are all part of the core platform.

Not to mention that running UNIX programs in OS X is more trouble at first as OS X doesn't natively use X11 and it will include none of the standard Qt or GTK libraries, X11, or GCC in a standard installation.

X11 and GCC are on every OS X installation CD. Yeah, it doesn't install them by default, but then again, Ubuntu doesn't install GCC by default either!

I bet that any CIO worth their Mountain Dew ration will feel the same way.

Again, we're not talking about buying OS X to get a UNIX, but buying OS X and getting a UNIX as part of the bargain. You don't need to have OS X to get a machine that uses UNIX standards, but if you do buy OS X machines, they can integrate into your environment much like any other UNIX.

Oh, and Linux does not necessarily have its own disk format like Solaris, OS X, or Windows do. Linux will install on ext2, ext3, ReiserFS 3, XFS, and JFS.

Of those, only XFS and JFS weren't especially designed for Linux. And it took several years to port XFS to Linux, reinforcing my point that filesystems are by and large closely tied to their host OS. Also, ext3 is the de-facto standard Linux filesystem. Every major distribution ships ext3 as the default, and its the first one to get improvements like the low-latency work and fine-grained locking.

And to be fair, OS X installs on UFS just fine, though some apps don't like the case-sensitivity.

And with the exception of ReiserFS and ext4, all of the Linux filesystems are fully read-write in at least one other OS. For example, Windows can read-write ext2 and ext3 via the IFS driver.

And both Linux and Windows can read-write HFS+. However, Windows won't install on ext2 or UFS, Linux won't install on NTFS, UFS, or HFS+, so why is it a surprise that OS X won't install on NTFS or ext3? The original poster asked "why does OS X use its own disk format", and the answer is: "almost every OS uses its own, preferred disk format". There are exceptions, and Linux is particularly flexible in this regard, but even on Linux there is a de-facto standard that is the most well-supported.

That's wrong. Whenever possible, OS X does things how other modern *NIXs do things. Aside from Quartz, Cocoa, and Carbon, most everything in OS X is built off open technologies. OpenGL, LDAP, CUPS, NFS, SSH, etc are all part of the core platform.

i.e. They suck every free technology and contribute almost nothing back to the OSS community, yet take full advantage of all the OSS work. And the stuff that makes a Mac a Mac is all closed software. Until I can download the source to Finder or iPhoto or iTunes, the

Things like a built-in webcam and wireless networking can be a liability in many workplaces, adding negative value to the machine because someone now has spend time doing whatever so people can't use them. Granted, if someone wants to steal some data bad enough, they'll probably be able to do it, but there is no point in making it any easier than nessecary.However, criticising Apple on ram is silly. For what you pay for one, the typical Mac is usually underspeced on ram compared to PCs in the same price r

Yeah, its funny. I work at a major Oil & Gas company in Calgary. We're a Novell/Windows 2000 shop primarily, and a pretty conservative one. We DO have several engineers on Linux workstations, however.

We're toying with upgrading to Vista clients down the road, and dropping Novell entirely (not my decision!). Linux workstations and Solaris VMWare servers aren't going anywhere. No one has seriously considered doing Mac anything, though... and lots of us run them at home.

"(The article dismisses Linux desktops in the enterprise in a single bullet item.)" And how is this still considered a noteworthy article?

Insightful, my eye. The bullet in question, from TFA, was:

The learning curve and disparity of Linux distributions is too high for easy general office use.

And that is different from this [hardocp.com] noteworthy article on using Linux on the desktop how? Because that is basically what I get from that article even though it is an article in which the author is actually *trying* to us

[quote]1) Linux is not a desktop OS (if it has changed in the last couple of years perhaps I should take a second look)[/quote]

Really? Tell that to my parents. The learning curve was so "bad" that not only did they accept Linux nearly instantly, but it has now been almost a month, and I haven't heard a complaint, nor request for help.

If a person said, "Gosh, OSX is a real slow beast of an OS, and that's an absolute truth, regardless of the fact that I haven't used it since the first release," it wouldn't stand for a minute. I pointed the same thing out and took flack for it. Selective moderation to match one's opinions such as that is not only moronic, but against the moderation guidelines as well.

if IT decision-makers can get over their prejudice against equipment that's traditionally been aimed at consumers.

They really think that's what's holding back Macs in the enterprise? I'm pretty sure the problem isn't prejudice against hardware, but integration issues that arise when moving from an all-MS shop to a mixed environment with OS X. The ROI needs to outweigh the obstacles, and it currently doesn't.

Hmm.. I think it's actually the other way around: While the "all-MS shop" allows you to change the (hardware-)horse whenever you want, once you're using the "mixed environment OS X", you're bound to one supplier (Apple) once and forever. There's no way you can change that - if you find out that Apple's support isn't as good as you were expecting, you'll face the high cost of changing back your IT to the Windows world.

If I had a business, I'd prefer to have options and I'd stick with Microsoft (while as a private user, I'm using a Mac and Linux).

Corprate It guy: Hey boss I just bought a bunch of macs at 20% over retail of similiar PC's. It seems the key application we make most our money on doesn't function on it so I bought new copies of the XP and reinstalled them. don't worry they dual boot.Corprate IT VP: Ohh wonderful. Why don't you give yourself a raise and have sex with my wife. While your ate it do my 19 year old daughter too. I'm going to go give my mercded to the next homeless person I see and donate all the company bank accounts to UNICE

I work in a media company with a mixed Mac/PC,Windows/OSX environment.If we start replacing end-of-life PCs with Macs we win all round. Its true.

The windows lovers can keep running windows, the OSX lovers can keep running OSX and whenever someone new starts we can ask them which do they prefer and sit them down at a totally generic workstation.

IT support is easier because everything runs on known hardware and systems can easily be imaged without worrying too much about drivers etc.

Your argument applies to Microsoft too. The difference is, once you have a mixed environment, you're not bound to Apple nor Microsoft. There's this little known thing called unix, and the future was 37 years ago.

You are all WAY off base. Looking at the total cost of ownership- anti-virus licensing, the cost of expensive deployment solutions for PCs versus the low cost of built in deployment solutions in Macs, the constant registry problems, driver issues, built in multimedia tools on Macs versus commercial solutions for PCs..all of these point to a MUCH lower cost for Apple hardware and software in the long run. I work in a dual platform environment and I have DOZENS of PCs in our repair area. I might have one or t

I work in a dual platform environment and I have DOZENS of PCs in our repair area. I might have one or two Macs a month with a software problem, and maybe a Mac ever other month with an actual hardware problem. And the best part is we have way more Macs in our organization than PCs.

Where do you work and what are you doing? I suspect you work at either a design studio or higher education (the only places I've heard of large Apple installs are education and graphics shops).

I work in a dual platform environment and I have DOZENS of PCs in our repair area.

I'll second that. In our company of mixed Mac/PC, we track the lifecycle of the machines. Each Mac outlasts 2.3 PCs and when the Macs are done, we sell them to the staff because they still work fine but too slow for our purposes. The PCs all went into recycling long ago.

In the last 3 years, we've introduced a lot of Macs to regular desktops in addition to the graphics areas. During that time, the simple exposure of the PC

I think the article's main thrust, however, is not that Mac OS X is the keye element making Apple ready for the enterprise, but the hardware. Since Macs can now run Windows through Boot Camp or through Parallels you can simply drop in a Mac where there once was a PC when you upgrade your machines. The point is that Macs deliver superior bang-for-the-buck. And the great majority of the article is dedicated to fawning over Apple hardware.Certainly the author does mention some aspects of OS X that are value

My own preferences for corporate desktops would be, in order, Linux, then Windows, then Mac.

In a corporate network environment, the flexibility of Linux desktops is unparalleled. You can optimize your storage needs (and not pay for 300 copies of an OS sitting on 300 hard drives, for example), and you can move applications around the network seemlessly without the users even noticing (useful when one app server gets overloaded). Sure there is a learning curve for the IT department, but on the desktop side, just make sure that for the less techie people, that everything is easily accessible. In fact, I have never found the learning curve to be an obstacle ("we depend on Quickbooks and their support" is a bigger one). In short, an intelligent Athena-style deployment of Linux systems (along with a move to diskless workstations wherever possible) could save a company a bundle on IT and improve productivity. The big issue is that the migration takes time.

Mac's have actually less flexibility than Windows despite the *nix base. You can only buy the systems from Apple, and the really nice aspects of an Athena-style deployment are not possible. Add to that the more limited choices of hardware, and you have some real concerns.

I am not saying tht Macs have no place in the corporate network. THere are places where they are probably very helpful including media production and the like. However, they would not be my first or even second choice for a corporate general-purpose desktop.

It is at virtually every company I've worked at. IT department "professionals" resisted efforts to bring a Mac in for various bullshit techhnical reasons (AFP over IP is too chatty...in 2003?), then when called on their crap, they just stand there, cross their arms, and say "not gonna happen".

It's a prejudice. Many times, these folks can't stand the thought of empowered users - or users who might know a bit more about getting work done than tinkering around with the guts of Windows.

It's a prejudice. Many times, these folks can't stand the thought of empowered users - or users who might know a bit more about getting work done than tinkering around with the guts of Windows.

It's a different machine, not a different dimension. Your users will be as good as you hire. The folks who couldn't set the wall paper before aren't going to miraculously learn. For most customization option or usage options, XP and OSX are similiar in difficulty. The gulf between OSX and XP is mostly in security and

I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking "Gee, it would be awesome to use a Mac at work. Let's see... Well, I've got Autocad, which doesn't exist for mac. Oh. I've got a big samba network that'll be a pain to access with the Mac. Oh. I've got a corporate intranet which can only be accessed with IE7. Oh. Finally, I've got a few dozen scripts I've written in FreeBASIC, which doesn't exist for Mac. Oh. Most of those arguements actually exist for Linux, too.It was about there that I decided that I'd best g

The samba part really confuses me. I'm trying to figure out how Apple screwed up samba support so bad. I had an OS X box copying 80gigs of photos to a Windows file server. It was going to take 30 hours. After 20 minutes watching it consistently go that speed I said screw that, pulled the hard drive out, popped it into a Knoppix box and copied all the photos using Linux and it took a little over 2 hours. That's insane! Both gigabit nics into a gigabit switch. Plus there is a weird subnetting issue I run into every now and again where it won't connect to a samba box if its on a different logical subnet. Of course sometimes it works so it's even more baffling.

I think Linux and Windows are definitely better options in the corporate world. Of course our corporate Intranet is fully accessible in Firefox because I didn't want to make my Mac users have to run Windows in addition to OS X which they are more comfortable with. It's all just crazy! There is no way Apple is ready for the big time. Perhaps in a few more years they'll get a clue but I doubt it, no one wants a single supplier of goods, it's dangerous to put all your eggs in one basket.

I was having the same problem and I solved it with two changes to my Mac.1.) Add "large readwrite=no" to the [global] section of/etc/smb.conf2.) create a/etc/sysctl.conf with the following inside itnet.inet.tcp.sendspace=65536net.inet.tcp.recvspace=65536net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0net.inet.udp.recvspace=73728

The most important thing seems to be the net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0 - on UNIX systems and Macs they will hold off on sending ACKs to save Network/CPU usage and it is a good thing. Windows however seems to wait on things until it gets ACKs with SMB and so it kills performance. After making these settings changes my SMB connection speed to my Vista box is unbelievably improved - things that were taking almost an hour before are done in like 5 minutes.

Not sure why Apple would ship with so anti-MS defaults considering how many of their users would be doing Samba stuff with Windows boxes though...

I work in IT and do a fair it of consulting on COEs (Common Operating Environments)among other things. I see *far* more interest in Linux on the desktop than Mac OS among most of the enterprises who are entertaining anything different than Windows.

This reads like a Mac fanboy wrote it. I can't think of any compelling reasons to recommend Macs in an enterprise environment. Properly implemented (that is with proper profiles and security), Windows 'Just Works' in business, and if one wants something different then there is Linux. The latter gives the benefit of being more customizable than either Windows or OS X in fact, given that all the source is available.

OK. How many enterprises customize linux when they deploy it? This is often given as a reason to choose open source over Mac OS or Windows solutions. I'm sure some do, but I doubt all do. Its not really a feature if the user/buyer don't care.

All of them. They "customize" it by picking the right distribution for their needs and they "customize" it by picking the hardware that meets their specific needs. For OS X, they get one OS distribution and four different kinds of machines to choose from, all from a single vendor, and that's not enough.

And in any corporate environment, after purchase, there are plenty of customizations related to system and network management that are necessary

Been a Linux admin for 10 years, running slackware as my sole OS for most of that time. The one thing people don't understand about Linux on the desktop is the nature of Linux and GNU development.

Windows and Macs offer a relatively stable development environment with a limited number of options. By stable I don't mean "doesn't crash", I mean "not changing much over time". An app that worked on the first version of XP will likely work on the last.

I want to know what the big deal is between not using Linux because it has too many options. Majority of the distros are either based on Debian or Red Hat. I haven't seen software that only worked on one distro, and things like apt-get, yum, synaptic, and all the other package managers can be installed on most of the distros. That just doesn't seem like a valid reason to automatically dismiss any Linux solution. Just use one distro throughout the whole comapny, problem solved.

Well because for software with source aviable it is no problem. The distributor just recompiles it and it works. And usually software on Linux is open it works this way.

The trouble start when you have to deal with closed source software. I know there is not much of it in general use and it is usually kernel related stuff. Try installing some old nvidia drivers on recent Linux systems. Try installing Borland Kylix on any Linux system. Try installing

Macs are not enterprise ready. The computers, save for the Mac Pro's, are not easily serviceable by IT departments, unlike, say, Thinkpads. Ever try changing a hard drive of a Macbook Pro? You don't wanna get stuck doing that. Also, Exchange dominates the corporation fields. Mac OS X has a long way to go in the aspects of group policy, and other details that Windows offers that admins need. Sure, you might be able to make hacks in the OS to make things work the way you want it, but Linux is a better option if you want a UNIX-like OS.

The typical large enterprise doesn't service laptops of any kind today. They buy the unit with support that spans the life of the machine. If it breaks, they call an 800 number, wait for a box, put the dead unit in the box, ship it off to be fixed and wait for the return. When the support contract expires, they retire the unit and buy a new one.

Apple doesn't sell "anti-consumer" (well, uh, you know what I mean) or "enterprise" computers, so why do you need to include such a marketdroid MBA word to describe it? Macs have never really been designed to be your typical boring "enterprise" desktop or notebook, so it's completely redundant to say it.

Is the same for Linux, OS X, Solaris or CICS, at least from the standpoint of a workforce who has used nothing other than Windows.

I do find it very interesting that these stories are all over the place lately. "Apple is ready for the enterprise". This makes what now, 5 or six in the past month alone? They always open with "IT managers are tired of spyware", as if spyware was a problem in large corporations (the targets of these articles), they always proceed to dismiss Linux as an alternative... could it have something to do with the release of Vista? Naaaah. Now if this were articles targetting Apple then of course Microsoft would be behind them.

I use a Mac, but it always surprises me when people start advocating them for corporate use. First, support is simply not good enough. Even Dell is better (in the UK, maybe the situation is different in the USA). The real thing missing is the motivation. If a company is dissatisfied with Microsoft, then it is likely to be either due to vendor lock-in, or price. I am not convinced Apple wins on price, but they certainly don't win on vendor lock-in. Who in their right mind would trade vendor lock-in on

I suspect that Apple definitely does NOT want to enter a cut throat world of competition where it becomes just an also ran competing on price with a thousand corporate buyers, when it can design kick-ass product in the consumer market place.

This was written by a misguided (and severely deluded,) fan-boy.

The PC wars are long over. Get over it. Microsoft won. (So they're now tied to the office and that kind of ugly industrial design. [Think BROWN Zune. Yuck!])

Apple is a whole lot better positioned to compete in the vastly more profitable consumer arena.

The two -- enterprise and consumer -- are not necessarily mutually exclusive. You're right, of course, that "high-end stuff" and "best price for desktops we put on corporate drone desktops" are mutually-exclusive (though one would wonder if Apple can figure out how to leverage what it's doing in the high-end market to also deliver lower-end stuff -- isn't that partially what the Mini's about?).But I'll give you an example -- I work for a very large staffing company (10K corporate employees, 100K-350K temps

It is very difficult for any company to sustain a 90% marketshare. At this level it is very difficult for MSFT to distinguish truly exceptional programmers, managers, salespersons from the mediocre ones who just pile on to the juggernaut plowing through the fields. The truly exceptional are migrant and they leave, but the incompetents know it and they stay on. Thus over time it gets completely calcified like an old boiler. Even then it is very difficult for me to believe that Macs have a chance. Linux might

The consumer arena itself isn't necessarily more profitable, it is just that Apple's computers are more profitable. They tend to add gimmicky features to create in impression of value (remote? (crap) cell camera on a monitor? WTF?). They have very few models to maintain and each model sells a lot more than nearly any model that a competitor sells, and limiting the number of variations allows them to get a better discount on larger quantities of parts, I think.I'm surprised that Apple doesn't bother so mu

(The article dismisses Linux desktops in the enterprise in a single bullet item.)

And just how is a Linux desktop different than a PC desktop (e.g. Dell/HP) different than an Apple desktop. While this article seems to talk about the hardware, the real answer is: THE OPERATING SYSTEM! With Apple, when you talk about the line-up you can't really separate the hardware from the software, yet Linux and Windows are run on current Macs, and OS-X is successfully (albeit illegally) ported to Dells. So what is special about Apple? The hardware, or the software, and why would Linux even be mentioned in any discussion of the hardware -- except that it runs on a lot more hardware than OS-X, and costs less. All this makes this article, and generally this whole discussion, hard to take seriously.

Well I do. And the rate of failure is just terrible. Without exact numbers at hand, I can definitely say we've sent over 30 iBooks to the local Apple service partner.
Being an enterprise customer you definitely dont have to wait in line for consumer service, we just send the computers directly for service. Otoh, you definitely won't get 4hr onsite like all the major pc vendors offer.

As for group policy and manageability, Apple got in the game late and will definitely catch up. The question is when (and what decade).

I think the new servers made everyone take notice in the business world. Now with Vista getting routinely bashed even in the pro PC press it's made everyone take a second look at Macs. This is a trend that started even before Vista was released and the release of OSX and the hardware price drops made a lot of people notice Mac. Last year saw record sales for Mac and this year is likely to continue the trend. OSX Leopard is probably going to cause a spike because from all reports it delivers on it's promises. What has never been pointed out is Mac managed record sales in the middle of a massive transition. When they launched the Intel Macs very little software was compatible. By summer that had changed and now most software has been ported. The switch to Intel did make a lot of people take notice and Bootcamp was a big help but to manage record sales during a transition with the normal chaos is very impressive. I will say there was surprisingly little chaos for such a major shift. They seemed to have learned their lesson with the early OSX mess and made the tranisition to Intel as smooth as possible. This is an amazing window for Mac and they are positioned well to take advantage of it. One prediction is Microsoft really tries hard to dump Office for Mac. Expect more problems with the Mac version and Microsoft to try to make a case for it not being practical to continue support. Microsoft doesn't like competition and Mac is likely to gain a few points of market share. I'm not sure that it'll ever pass 10% of market but that's still a huge amount of growth. The lack of the majority of software not supporting Mac, mostly lower end but by volume most doesn't where as most high end does, and a lack of options for equipment. They have a nice selection but it's a tiny fraction compared to Windows. Ultimately it's third party support that's Windows strength. If that ever changes they may be in serious trouble. Doubt it ever will though.

Of course in a big place with the resources and staff to centrally manage all the desktop machines this is a non-issue.

But in a small business with no dedicated IT people, or one who has worked with Windows his whole life, the investment of time and effort to figure out which distro to use and how to use it could very well be unrealistic.

These are exactly the businesses that Apple could make real inroads into, if it chose to... the unique aspect of Macs is that they

OSX has a learning curve too - quite a big one if you're used to Windows (try to find *anything* on OSX when you've been using the start menu for 5 years for example).Both Linux and OSX have a chance now because Vista is such a major headache.. it doesn't work like Windows so it's back to square one with the training (no way I'd upgrade my mother's machine.. if even an icon goes out of place she phones me up for support - Vista would just have her putting it back in a box and forgetting about it!!).

But in a small business with no dedicated IT people, or one who has worked with Windows his whole life, the investment of time and effort to figure out which distro to use and how to use it could very well be unrealistic.

Let me help you there: use Ubuntu with the default install. It will do everything you need. (So will most of the other well-known Linux distros, but you wanted a simple answer and if you want a simple answer, the differences won't matter to you).

Apple do not offer (in the UK, for a several-hundred-person ecommerce company where I work) anything that we consider enterprise-grade service. If one of the desktop Dells breaks down, we call Dell and someone shows up the next day to wherever the machine is and fixes it. If one of our Apple machines breaks down, we send it to Apple or take it to the Apple dealer who sits on it for some days, at least, then fixes it and returns it to us. That's not acceptable for the whole enterprise, especially for people

They are not. just from trying to get them configured for the uni ldap, autofs, nis, it's a pita. We have to manually make changes in the nfs script because it makes 1000's of symlinks in 2 different directories. Many of the settings that can be modified with nss_ldap don't even exist on osx, for example loginshell overrides. There's no newgrp, we have to roll our own. It's going to be real fun transferring all our users from nis to open directory (slapd) when we start configuring that. Will padl's migrationtools work, I doubt it.

OSX server comes with apache 1.3..wtf? we had to use fink and install 2.0.something (the apache2 monolithic build provided by serverlogistics.com has cgi bugs). The configuration files are all over the place/etc/hostconfig,/Library,/System/Library, netinfo gui while on more posix systems it's just/etc . The perl that also comes with osx is buggy (try installing Net::LDAP and all its prereqs using perl -MCPAN -e shell).

How do I login to an xserve with ssh -C -Y or ssh -X and run gvim or an xterm or any X app, can't have to use vnc. Then there's HFS which we have to use to support all those nasty meta files. I guess Xsan will be nice when we use it but that's after we get all the data off our huge raid array just for a couple of mac clients.

We haven't even started migrating postgres, mailman, request tracker, and sendmail yet. If it's anything like the way it has been already we're probably going to have to use fink again.

And no I don't want quicktime on my headless Xserve, thinking differently is difficulty.

For security reasons, you should have abandoned NIS long ago, and OpenDirectory works just beautifully with OSX, Linux, and Windows clients. Turn on the ssh daemon, and your ssh -X, etc work just fine, and Macs understand NFS, as well as other file systems just fine. In other words, there is no reason to do anything to your RAID array other than tell the Macs where it is and what protocol to use to connect to it. There are also tools, of course, to enable you to make standardized disk images with configurable parameters and use those for future client installs.

I'm running my entire lab off OS-X, with a compute cluster and file system integrated into distributed desktops (OSX and Linux. We had a windows but I sensibly turned it off when we bought the first IntelMac), and not so much as a hiccup. The main problems you're describing are the classic, "it looks unixy, so I'm going to treat it as if it were a Linux box." No, it's a Mac, descended from NeXTs. Get the Apple docs out (dreadful though they may be), read a little of "The Mac Way", and quit fighting it. I found most of my problems at first arose from trying to treat Macs as if they were just nice-looking RedHat boxes, rather than something different.

Pardon for sounding rude, but it sounds like you've learned one system, and aren't willing to attempt to learn another. Current Macs are one of the easiest machine to integrate into a mixed environment that I've encountered, and this is after over a decade and a half of running various Unices, Linuces, Windows, and VMS systems in mixed environments.

I really like to buy a mac mini for work, but there is a glitch. I admit - I am a one person company, but I need a new computer for business.There is just one little issue. I'd like to use two monitors. I do this today, with Windows and Linux. This can really increase productivity. But the mac mini has only one DVI connector. There is a hardware solution to connect two monitors, but it supports only 1280*1024 for each display. I could buy a Mac pro, but this is far to expansice. and the support for two moni

iMacs support a second monitor up to 1920x1200. They're not perfect for everyone, but there is a two-monitor option between the mini and the Pro.

And what do you mean "the support for two monitors in OS X is not ideal?" It works flawlessly and completely transparently. In my experience it's easier to get two monitors working with OS X than any other OS (not that it's hard anymore on those other OSes).

I don't know what you mean by OS X's dual-head support being "non-ideal." It works just as well as Windows for me - about the only thing I haven't figured out how to do is change the second monitor's desktop with AppleScript, which is somewhat low on the priority list anyway:). Do you have specific complaints? Maybe I can help.

I'm using an iMac with a 17" CRT I had lying around. The original iMacs had a bad rep because spanning was crippled in software, but that hasn't been true for a while.

Even if we assume, just for the sake of argument, that OS X is "enterprise ready", the fact that Apple hardware comes from a single company makes Macintosh an unacceptable choice. The fact that that company also has a very limited product range makes it even less feasible.

Are we seeing any evidence of Apple machines actually making an inroad here, even coming up in migration feasibility studies? I've seen nothing of the kind in Europe, yet magazines, blogs and newspapers seem to often tout various migrations to Linux, sometimes for the purposes of case-study.

The reality is Linux is already being adopted in the enterprise, at least in Europe. Linux increases the longevity of the existing hardware installation and provides cost incentives where upgrading is concerned. Learn

(As a note - I _am_ an OS X (and Linux and Windows) user and admin. I have dozens of Apples ranging from G4s, G5s, Mac Pros, Powerbooks, MPros, and Xserves.)

The learning curve and disparity of Linux distributions is too high for easy general office use.

As someone else noted already, dismissing Linux with a single line is a little silly. Ubunutu is starting to gather desktop momentum. But I'll ignore the Linux factor. There is also a learning curve for moving from Windows to OS X, some of which Apple refuses to deal with. Many users are very used to AND prefer keyboard shortcuts to access pulldown menus, for example. The lack of consistancy for what the green window size button does is fustrating. Even Apple's own software fails to consistantly follow their own UI guidelines. Again, for example, a few applications quit entirely when you close the window while the majorty close the window but the program continue to run.

Many corporate applications have been ported to W3-compliant Web services that are OS-agnostic

Um... yeah. Sure. Which Enterprises are these again? Most Enterprises run tons of legacy software that's connected to via local software (often written in VB) or IE only frontends. Part of being an Enterprise level business is that you have years and decades worth of IT cruft that's built up.

Because Macs work with Microsoft's directory, enterprise administrators can now more easily manage Macs alongside Windows machines.

OS X works with _some_ parts of AD. There is still no viable replacement for Outlook on OS X. Whether you like Outlook with Exchange or not (I don't), there's very little that can do everything it can, and most Enterprise scale businesses are wrapped around it. Remember, it's not just a mail client or a personal scheduler, it's a foundation that many other companies have built on top of the scheduling features.

Yes, you can add virtualization, but then you're back to the problems of running Windows, plus now you have additional administration overhead of running and managing two OSes on each system plus additional user training and problems.

I'm also unaware of a way that I can push updates and settings to OS via Group Policies without using third party software. This is a key factor to Enterprises. A huge factor in deciding whether to shift OSes is the fact that the IT staff must be trained and experienced in what they're going to move to. If they've put years into developing internal tools to manage and deal with Windows, the cost of moving to OS grows.

We find that most PCs that are sold as enterprise desktops are actually stripped-down, lightweight versions of the computers the same companies sell to home users. These machines lack the basic technologies needed in the modern enterprise. Apple, on the other hand, simply doesn't sell a minimalist computer whose predominant 'feature' is its price point, aimed at businesses or any other market."

For instance, you can't buy a Mac without at least 512MB of RAM, Bluetooth, 802.11g Wi-Fi networking, Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire and even a remote control..."

My last big batch of Windows desktops were purchased nearly 3 years ago and have 1GB RAM, gigabit ethernet, and have been just fine.

Firewire? Why do enterprise desktop users need firewire? The only reason you need it is for digital video and audio or extremely fast file transfers. Not desktop use.WiFi? I don't want desktop users using WiFi. That's why we have millions of dollars of copper and fiber infrastructure with security features and VLANs. Wireless is great for some things, but it does not scale and it is inherently less secure than hardwire. Even just having 802.11 means that every single desktop is a potential rogue WiFi station letting people inside the firewall. Great.Bluetooth? Sort of neat, but again, desktop users don't need it and it opens up security issues.And I can't believe they even tried to cite having a remote control

I am a bit too tipsy to count, but as far as I can tell *none* of the replies here agree with the title of this post, and about half of them take the drastic (that is, drastic for a slashdot audience) stand that MS is a better choice than the Apple.MS has made a lot of changes over the years to make their OS enterprise friendlier, it continues with Vista, and I don't think Apple has really even started down that road. I think that for a big enterprise there is not other choice than Windows, or maybe a custo

In a small network I managed (20 WinXP PCs and a Linux server), the question came up of buying one Mac. The reason was that one person received Mac CDs from graphics shops with Quark Xpress files, and only Macs could read the font files on these CDs. Since it was not possible to educate the various graphics designers from various places and countries to send the stuff correctly, the idea was to buy a Mac and a Quark license, and be done with the problem.The Mac + the Quark license would have cost around $3-

-Spyware/etc. point taken, but we have yet to see how well non-MS platforms hold up in the onslaught of common users faced with a large set of attackers. I've not seen any attempts at spyware/adware under linux yet, probably ditto for Mac. Some malware attempting to run without permission may be mitigated, but a lot of malware is invited in by users implicitly or explicitly installing it by their own free will, without realizing until later the consequences.-linux isn't actually that bad for common offic

...for moving from a Windows office to an xNIX office. And by xNIX I mean Macs and Linux boxes side by side. I mean FreeBSD and/or Solaris too serving up your data. Mac OS X has a few advantages Linux does not have and never will: Microsoft and Adobe software. Adobe is even reintroducing Premiere for Mac OS X, something that the platform lost when Apple put out Final Cut the first time and Adobe got their noses out of joint over it.

I hate MS and Adobe as much as the next geek, and will gleefully point out F/OSS solutions like OpenOffice.Org, Kino and The GIMP, but let's face it, what will someone completely unhip to F/OSS rather have in front of them: the F/OSS workalike or the reassuring name-brand? Will MS and Adobe ever port to Linux? When pigs fly.

With Mac OS X, you have an xNIX under the hood, and a friendly face out in front. Give the office folks Macs, and use Linux or FreeBSD on those servers that used to run Windows Server. Heck, basically Mac OS X Server is Mac OS X plus ports of stuff like Samba and CUPS. Save your money you would have spent on an XServe and repurpose some PCs with Linux or FreeBSD.

right here [slashdot.org]. This very discussion made me wonder if the Apple is ready for the enterprise, customer-service wise.

That said, I'm personally thinking of bringing my old Mac Mini from home to work (and buying a new one for home;-) even if the organization won't pay for it. Why? Mainly Mail and Spotlight. Those two really make me more efficient, yes, to the point of buying one for work on my personal money. (the only challenge is making IT to allow this Mac on the network)

The AppleCare Premium Service and Support Plan delivers up to three years of 24/7 telephone and email support -- with 30-minute response. For Xserve, the plan covers server administration and network management issues using the graphical user interface of Mac OS X Server. For Xserve RAID, the plan covers RAID Admin software, as well a

Apple has a long way to go before Macs will be ready for widespread enterprise use.

While Apple has a ways to go, I wouldn't call it a long way. You are completely correct in you listing of their corporate-important deficiencies, however these are fixable, if Apple wishes to fix them, in relatively short order. Apple has to want to fix them, and that's the real battle.

Apple's desire to fix the issues can be summed up in the words, "can we make money doing it?"

It's easy to write a checklist of features that would make up a dream enterprise service package. It's harder to make that package turn a profit in the market. And it's easy for companies to use checklists to justify sticking with the status quo rather than trying something new.

Someone earlier in the thread mentioned 4-hour onsite service, for instance.. for desktop machines, not xServes sitting back in the machine room. Lemme tell ya: I've worked for a couple of large companies and have never seen an IT deal that involves 4-hour onsite service guarantees for any random PC sitting on an everyday worker's desktop. Mission-critical servers, yes. Buy-em-by-the-carload boxes that let users connect to the mission-critical servers? Not a chance. Keeping those running is what the IT department's job. And even then, good luck getting 4-hour turnaround on any issue that doesn't cause significant financial losses from the moment it crops up to the moment the system is fixed and running again. For problems that can be stopped by pulling the network cable out of the wall and shutting off the machine, that's exactly as much ASAP service as you'll get. Anything else will happen later, maybe, if it turns out that we really have to.

These checklists of 'things Apple has to do to compete in the enterprise market' smell to me more like excuses not to spend time exploring alternatives than things people would actually buy if Apple made them available.

Companies don't buy Macs because they don't use Macs now. Simple as that. They already have a large and complex body of hardware and software doing mission-critical things, and it all more or less works the way it is. Adding more machines that are basically the same is known to be reasonably easy. Even if there are teething problems, those tend to get identified early and worked around. Trying something new raises the spectre of potential compatability issues in any of a million undocumented places.

Apple will gain entry to the enterprise market as enterprises move away from proprietary formats and protocols, thus making it easy to fit any standards-compliant machine into the system. And even then, someone will have to lock the beancounters out of the room long enough to explain that a low cost of acquisition does not necessarily equal low TCO.

Of course, a series of negative miracles could happen to Dell (they're in a bad patch right now, but I think they can turn it around) and make Apple look like an island of stability in a PC market that's fighting to rebalance itself.

Exactly, Apple does not get enterprise IT. Apple Remote Desktop and OS X Server are half-assed attempts at this sort of thing - and may work OK in a small workgroup but not in a real Enterprise. Apple has a long way to go before they start attract lots of corporate customers.

Remember, Apple is an idealistic company, and likes to push its idea of future tech...

Instead of a docking station, Apple would suggest that you use

a Bluetooth keybard and mouse

a wireless network connection

network-attached printers and mass storage at the other end of that wireless connection

This leaves you with only a power cable and a DVI cable to hook up. When the laptop has ports on both sides (with the power and DVI on opposite sides), so you have to hook up two docks, docks won't save you any effort at all.

I know this won't work for everyone, but it's perfectly representative of how Apple tends to think.

Even if you can't use any of the wireless stuff, you still only have power, DVI, USB, and Ethernet to hook up. (Your monitor probably has a USB hub that you can use to hook up your KB, mouse, printer, mass storage, audio interface, etc., etc.) That's a long way from the old days when you might have had separate connections for your KB/mouse, monitor, printer, external hard drive, network, audio, and power.

-Wireless means more maintenance in the context of Bluetooth, batteries to keep charged, etc.-Wireless networks do not scale well. Even at small scale performance isn't that great but at large scale the shared medium takes its toll beyond that.-Third point taken (network printers are more logical generally, centralized storage for data management also makes sense), but the mass storage on the other end runs into the above-mentioned performance aggravations.A docking station shouldn't have to plug into the

I would not recommend companies get wireless capabilities they do not intend to use. THe big issue with wireless is that there is no phyisical perimeter for the intranet, so it becomes quite possible for one person to enable it and essentially open up the intranet to passers by.If a company wants to go wireless, then Macs are not a bad option in this regard. If they don't then *don't get one.* Remove wireless cards from laptops, and the like.

Do we really have to have one of these trolls in every Mac-related discussion?

For the last time (until next time...)
1. Macs are NOT significantly more expensive than comparably equipped commodity machines, for the most part.
1a. On the high end, they tend to be *cheaper* than comparable commodity machines (esp. Mac Pro).
2. However, Apple does not sell barebones configurations; that is not its business.
3. Therefore, *base* prices of Macs tend to be higher.

Anyone who says Apple hardware is 2x as expensive is comparing a barebones PC to a fully loaded Mac (and there really isn't any other kind).

Of course, businesses may want those cheap barebones PCs, but if they do, they are not businesses who would ever buy Apple, even if Apple had flawless enterprise-level support. Apple is a maker of highly capable multimedia PCs with lots of easily configurable connectivity options. That, not barebones commodity hardware, is its business.

Apple is a maker of highly capable multimedia PCs with lots of easily configurable connectivity options. That, not barebones commodity hardware, is its business.

I believe you just made the point of everybody who is arguing against the article...Apple only wants to make multimedia boxes with high connectivity. Besides a few marketing people and of course the upper management (dilbert's PHB types), corporations don't need multimedia-rich computers.

Example: Consider an office building with 500 people working there, a basic mid-sized office for most companies. The marketing department will make up about 25-30 people, of which only 5-10 will need to use photoshop or any other memory intensive app that is arguably better suited for the mac. Upper management will also manifest about 15-20 people, of which it's likely easier to get them macs. I'd acknowledge that there MAY be as much as another 20 people who could make an excuse for why they need the features that come on the most minimal mac rather than a PC that's slightly scaled down from that level.

At the very most, in this example, I could 70 people (out of 500), that are somehow better served by getting a mac (noting of course that I'm comparing against a completely barebones windows PC). $900 for the mac, let's say $650 for the pc (since we might as well have 512 megs of ram and make sure the monitor is 17 inch). Do I really need to write out the math, or is the point made yet? 900 x 500 = $450,000, or 650 x 500 = $325,000 + $5000 in selective upgrades = $330,000.

A difference of $120,000 will pay for an extra IT guy (if the current group wasn't already enough) and it's cover hardware replacements, and be a good chunk of money towards the next upgrade/replacement cycle (which will come no sooner than it would with the Mac). Certainly a theoretical example, and it's not precise, but it is reasonable and it shows there's a huge difference...which means even if I've got a couple of minor errors, it still proves the point.